


Last Scenario Meta

by A_Friendly_Irin



Category: Last Scenario
Genre: Amnesia as Plot Device, Feminism, Media Criticism, Media analysis, Meta, Nonfiction, Redemption, Villains, characterization, on writing, toxic masculinity
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2019-02-01
Packaged: 2019-09-12 13:07:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16873446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Friendly_Irin/pseuds/A_Friendly_Irin
Summary: For the three other people in the fandom.





	1. Deconstructions of Toxic Masculinity Seen Through the Major Villains

I was thinking about the gender balance in Last Scenario – it’s very good by RPG standards, but it could certainly be better. I wondered if the male characters could have been genderflipped to give a more even cast, but I actually think this is one case where masculinity is a justified part of the characters. What I realized is that, while it’s never made explicit, many of the character conflicts are ones of toxic masculinity.

There is a recurring theme in Last Scenario about openness vs. isolation. This is most obvious and explicit with Castor, but we see it featured in other ways long before he enters the stage. Looking back, it’s blindingly obvious that this is what the story was ultimately building to the whole time. Felgorn, ostensibly the masculine ideal of power, is utterly miserable, trapped in depression because he has no friends or peers to support him. It’s obvious that he desperately wants not power, but human connection and moral support – so desperately that he latched on to  _Augustus_  of all people. And though Augustus provides some genuine support, he is also a bro-ish competitive type who just makes things worse for Felgorn. (“It felt good to let it all out,” he says after ranting to Helga – yeah, that catharsis really does feel nice. It’s a human need; one that Augustus has denied himself, for one reason or another. Maybe if he had allowed himself to express this frustration earlier, in healthier ways, he wouldn’t have gone quite so power-crazy?)

Felgorn – he is in many ways the typical jRPG hero, the person who Castor might want to be. He’s got the cape, the sword, the power to be literally a one-man army – but he doesn’t have friends, and that turns out to matter a lot more. And he knows it. He hates himself, he hates what he’s had to do, but he can’t open up about those feelings to anyone, so he just lets it stew and fester until it kills him, and even that can’t make him feel like it was worth anything, as shown by his last words:

> _Felgorn: I am… so tired of all of this. My life, it was all just… a waste…_

It wasn’t! But he didn’t allow himself to believe anything else. He got everything society said he should want, he was everything society said he should be, but he still wasn’t happy. He couldn’t recognize what he really needed until it was too late.

Then our next villain is Ortas, who dresses himself up as this cool, suave mastermind and ideological firebrand, but in the end, we find that he was just trying to cope with a grief he was never allowed to express in a healthy way.

> _Lorenza: No matter how hard you fought, no matter how many died for you… There is nothing that could’ve brought back your family._

The man we’re led to believe is the true villain for most of the game is, like Felgorn, ultimately reduced to a desire for human connection. “All the fighting… All the hatred… It all seems so unimportant now,” he says after Lorenza lays his true motives bare. Of course it was. It was a front to hide his true emotions, because he couldn’t admit those, even to himself. He had to turn despair into outrage, to be the strong-man leader people expected of him.

Then there’s Helio.

> _Helio: You’ve always hated me, haven’t you? You think I’m an untrustworthy, deceitful coward. But you know NOTHING about me! It was all YOU! YOU betrayed us! YOU chose a different path from the rest of us! I have ALWAYS been loyal to Castor. I’ve done EVERYTHING I could so that he could stand at the top. I dedicated my life to his dreams, I’ve given my all for his sake… So don’t you DARE look down on me! I’ll show you… I’ll show you all the extent of my devotion._

Just when you think you’re finally getting a villain you can feel good about killing, he has an emotional breakdown too. We never learn what Castor did to earn such astounding devotion, but there’s no question that Helio genuinely cares for him. But this time, even when we finally do have two people with a proper emotional connection, it gets twisted into something ugly, because Helio doesn’t know how to express it. At a loss, he throws himself into this creepy, self-sacrificing devotion. He assumes that’s what Castor wants, but if they would just  _talk to each other_  he might have learned that wasn’t true. Because we see what happens when Helio does what he thinks is best for Castor:

> _Flynn: … The enemy caught up with us in the woods. Helio stayed behind to give us a chance to escape. We… haven’t heard from him since.  
> _ _Castor: No… Because I lost, Helio…_

Like all the other villains, Castor puts on a front – but it is not, as might be initially obvious, just fear that he’s covering up. From flashes like this, I think it’s clear that Castor is, deep down, a very sensitive and compassionate man. He never wanted Helio to do this for him. He feels personally threatened by his own weakness, of course, but I think he’s possibly even more upset by the knowledge that someone else suffered for it too. This is interesting, when we’re introduced to him as a ruthless killer and he spends most of the game callous and arrogant. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this, along with the PTSD episode, is what we see when the mask finally slips. Castor’s constructed persona centers around hiding weakness – and, tragically, I think that also includes his compassion for others, because he sees his desire for connection and companionship as weakness too.

These are all expressions of toxic masculinity. The villains either deny or are denied their innate need for human contact, obsessing instead over personal power and independence in the belief that that can fill the void. But of course everyone needs that human contact, and so by denying it they deny their humanity, and become monsters. (If we want to go full English major on this, perhaps we could say that Castor’s physical transformation is only a symbolic reflection of how he was already behaving!) Like so many great stories, Last Scenario would never have happened if someone could have just given these people a therapist.

And that brings us to the heroes. In a good story, the heroes should be everything the villains are not. How is this shown?

The difference is stark. The heroes talk about everything. The few times they keep secrets from each other, it never accomplishes anything and they always feel guilty about it. They are constantly communicating, constantly showing their vulnerabilities to each other, constantly working out problems. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that they are also the most emotionally stable members of the cast.

I’ve often felt that the party members in Last Scenario are just a little bit… well,  _boring_ , to put it bluntly. But that’s exactly it: they don’t have any tantalizing neuroses, traumas, or psychological issues that are allowed to steep into a delicious character stew  _because they have healthy ways of coping with those problems_. They all have the potential to go down the path of Felgorn, Ortas, or Castor, but they don’t, because their friends always turn them away from that darkness. Hilbert opens up about his traumatic backstory quite early, even when he knows he has to struggle to be taken seriously. Thorve is as miserable as Felgorn before he finally opens up to the grief that’s been eating at him, and he’s able to move on. When Bergheim brings up that pain again, Randolph immediately chooses to talk about it instead of ignoring it. When Ethan remembers he killed Wolfram, he immediately confesses to Randolph, and is rewarded with forgiveness. The heroes trust each other with their vulnerabilities, and they are in turn treated with compassion and not derision.

(This extends to Drakovic, too – he’s very candid, and moreover he’s  _humble_. He knows and accepts his own limitations, because he knows he can trust people like Matilda to have his back.)

This compassion even extends to their enemies. Let’s take a brief look at every villainous confrontation (sans Tazar, who they are totally down with murdering):

> _Thorve: I will not abandon a dying friend a second time!_
> 
> _Hilbert: Ortas… Just… give up already. You look like you can barely stand._
> 
> _Zawu: Castor, don’t do this._
> 
> _Zawu: Stop it already. Castor needs help. Can’t you see? He can’t take much more of this fighting. He’s destroying himself. Surrender. It’s the only way to save him._
> 
> _Zawu: No! Don’t be a fool! If you are really acting in Castor’s best interests, then cease this pointless resistance!  
> _ _Ethan: This isn’t necessary, Helio._
> 
> _Lorenza: You poor, poor woman. My grandfather longed for Esmeralda, enough that he spared your life in the vain hope that she’d return. But he has come to understand it now. That Esmeralda is dead, and you are not her. You are only a shell of the woman with that name. There is nothing inside of you but emptiness._ […] _These centuries of torment have to come to an end. Her spirit should finally be allowed to find peace._
> 
> _Hilbert: People of the Rosehart Kingdom! Listen to me!_ […] _You have no chance of winning this battle anymore. Lay down your arms and surrender. I guarantee that no one who surrenders will come to harm. We are not here for revenge, or to destroy your country. We are only here for your leaders, who have committed severe crimes against the world. Please, think about your own safety. Think about your friends and family. No one has to die here._
> 
> _Grauss: This ship must have weapons, right? We can use those to attack his hideout, and bury him without having to risk our lives out there.  
> _ _Zawu: If you try that, I will do anything I can to stop you.  
> _ _Ethan: And so will I._
> 
> _Lorenza: You’ve suffered long enough. As the daughter of Meodar, Elder of the Havali, I forgive you._

Time and time again, they try to save people. The closest we get to the typical excuse for violence is with Tiamat, but even after denying her humanity, Lorenza still reminds us she was a good person once, and mourns her loss. Even though the majority of the party consists of hardened soldiers, they do not enjoy fighting, and they give their enemies every possible opportunity to surrender. Their true strength lies not in Matilda’s lance or Lorenza’s lightning bolts, but in their humanity.

And I believe the game actually reinforces this, and makes the player share in this view. In most RPGs, villain boss fights are exhilarating, climactic affairs. You feel justified and empowered in taking down the big bad boogeyman. Last Scenario always denies you that. Yes, you do get those climactic boss fights… but always when the villains are at their lowest points, when all you can feel for them is pity. You’re never allowed to relish it. And, yes, I think the extreme difficulty even works for this too – those battles are serious, deadly, and frustrating obstacles, not something you can casually conquer to feel good about yourself. You’re encouraged to empathize with the heroes and the villains, and wish that there was another way. There is something oddly  _Steven Universe_ -esque about this narrative – compassion and empathy are consistently emphasized, and they’re what ultimately save the day in the end. Could this little 2008 RPG Maker game have been ahead of the curve?

These ideas are not just antithetical to a lot of RPGs, they’re also antithetical to traditional ideas of masculinity. (There is a reason for that overlap, of course – which is why I really wish that, like, Hilbert got gender-flipped at the least; come on, while you’re subverting all the tropes can’t you also subvert the idea that this is a boy-only space?)

According to traditional ideals of masculinity, men aren’t allowed to show vulnerability. They have to be strong and capable all the time. And that concept of “vulnerability” is continually expanded until it encompasses practically all of humanity. Social connections make you weak. Caring about people makes you weak. Having emotions makes you weak. All that matters is personal strength. REAL MEN are rugged grizzled muscle tanks who aren’t afraid of anything and communicate only in grunts. REAL MEN are lone wolves who don’t have to rely on anyone. REAL MEN do what has to be done; they make the hard choice but the  _right_  choice, like [crushing down that empathy so you can kill people you don’t like](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dragon-quill.net%2Fcrossed-and-moral-courage-in-murdering%2F&t=ZmIxMmIzMjljNDk3NGFjYTQyZWRiYTFlMjlkMjg0ZWYxNjIzMjc2YixTam9FRXVxWQ%3D%3D&b=t%3AuNWr44bPgx2r6X08uc_QCQ&p=https%3A%2F%2Fafriendlyirin.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F152205820758%2Flast-scenario-and-toxic-masculinity&m=1).

Suddenly Castor makes a lot more sense, doesn’t he. How can he be so stupid, you might have asked yourself? How can he be so blind to his own emotions and the obvious love and support that surrounds him? How can he not see the glaringly obvious flaws in his thinking? Well. I think you could ask many real men the same questions.

It’s possible that this is all coincidence – it might just be that Last Scenario’s general themes of war and heroism dovetail nicely with deconstructions of toxic masculinity. Certainly SCF did an admirable job of making what seems to be a truly egalitarian world; gender roles and their associated stupidity are never brought up even once. But a work of fiction can’t escape the biases of its creator, and, intentionally or unintentionally, I think SCF did let these concepts bleed into the story. And I think that’s a good thing. I hope the people who play Last Scenario learn something from it, and take strength in that.


	2. Why Did Lorenza Really Leave Entalar?

So, something’s been gnawing at me for a while. While I really like Barasur’s role in the ending, I did find it rather contrived that Lorenza left him in that position in the first place. It felt like pure plot contrivance to keep the party together; Barasur explicitly states that not only is he demonstrably a terrible leader, the stress of the job is killing him and he desperately wants out. In that context, Lorenza’s response of “Nah I don’t wanna, I’m sure you can take care of things bye!” seems not just irresponsible but actively hurtful to Barasur, who is now going to go back to being a sad, lonely old man without even Ortas to pass the buck to.

I think we can make this work if we assume Lorenza is not meant to be in the right: that she is, in fact, being knowingly selfish. Because really, she has every right to be. Think of how the past day has gone from her perspective: she was separated from her friends, betrayed by a trusted relative, imprisoned and given a probably biased story by someone who hates her grandfather, forced into a ritual, witness to a murder, threatened by said murderer, then had to finish off Ortas herself, then had to talk down the angry crowd afterward. That’s, y’know, kind of a lot for anyone to go through, let alone a ~20-year-old from a quiet rural village. She was just pushed to her breaking point, and is now told she has to keep politicking with these scary violent people all on her own. Of course she’s going to bail.

So just this once, Lorenza chooses to be selfish under the guise of selflessness. By any logical and ethical metric, leaving Barasur alone with this mess is the absolute worst decision. But by a personal metric, Lorenza has no reason to want to help these people who a) she doesn’t actually know that well and b) just did horrible things to her. She sees the easier but less responsible route of rejoining her friends and comfortably fading into the background again, so she takes it while rationalizing to herself that Barasur can totally handle everything despite all evidence to the contrary.

(And now if you want to depress yourself, imagine how she must feel even worse after hearing the news!)

I’m probably reading too much into things. But I do think this is an interesting perspective to take: it justifies a contrived plot point that is nonetheless necessary to make Barasur’s story come to a satisfying conclusion, and it makes Lorenza just a little bit flawed and therefore more human.


	3. Criticism of Ortas' Master Plan, and Alternate Proposals

I’ve been thinking a lot about Last Scenario lately. I’m continually amazed by how well the writing holds up, but there’s one plot point that gets more awkward the more I think about it.

 

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Ortas’ plan for Hilbert is  _monumentally_  stupid. I like the idea of it – in a story about the meaning of heroism, it’s clever for the villain’s plan to bank on the power of  _destroying_  a hero, and for the protagonist’s rise to heroism be constructed purposefully to make him fall.

But Ortas didn’t think any part of it through, which is incredibly disappointing not only when he’s built up to be this brilliant chessmaster but when this plan is the crux of Hilbert’s entire story. He even says “If only Zawu had chosen a weaker victim, and hadn’t betrayed me,” and like… [this Let’s Play](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=http%3A%2F%2Flparchive.org%2FLast-Scenario%2FUpdate%252037%2F&t=OWZlOThhNjIxMTc1YTNhNTAyZGZiMzgxMGJhMjQyMTI2MDQ5YTkyYyxXWW00RFZNYQ%3D%3D&b=t%3AnRQWOOVieYZYZeK8p5QRDA&p=http%3A%2F%2Fastalkingirin.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F144408277151%2Five-been-thinking-a-lot-about-last-scenario&m=1) says it best, I think: “Okay, I get that you feel the need to defend your awesome scheme, but this has to be the worst ‘if only’ ever. That is literally your entire plan right there! You might as well have said, 'My plan was flawless! If only I had thought all of the important parts through better!'”

How was he planning to crush Hilbert, first of all? The plan depends on a killswitch, but Ortas doesn’t seem to have one. Was he just going to reveal the seal was fake? Sure, that broke Hilbert when he found out… for like five minutes. The game repeats over and over again that no one actually cares about the seal, they care about Hilbert’s actual performance. Hilbert is the only one who really cares. And even if Ortas the all-seeing chessmaster was somehow totally blind and deaf to current events, he should know this, since he says he’s basing it on Valkyris’ own script – and Alexander not only became a hero on his own merits, his defection (which should have been even more demoralizing than his death) didn’t do anything to break his army. The lesson of the Demon War is that a hero can’t change a thing: it’s just a meaningless word.

I think the problem here is that the story is too in love with tearing down the concept of heroism that it doesn’t know when to stop. It tries to take it all back and say heroes do matter just so it can show the negative side of it, even when we’ve just had like three consecutive plotlines pound it into our head that heroes don’t even matter enough for that. For this reveal to work, there had to be a more nuanced message. If more people were instantly enamored by Hilbert’s seal and he received praise and warm welcomes wherever he went (orchestrated by Zawu, no doubt), it would be a lot more shocking to learn it was all a cynical ploy. (Plus that would probably speed up the early game, which is the game’s other major weakness…) If Hilbert’s heroic ancestry doesn’t matter, than taking it away doesn’t either.

But this also raises the question of why Ortas expected Zawu to go along with this. Zawu’s not Havali, she has no stake in this. It  _would_ be pretty easy for her to assassinate Hilbert, but by that point Ortas will have already had to reveal that btw we are the demons, it’s us. She’d have to be pretty stupid to not see the writing on the wall. Why is he so surprised by her preemptive betrayal? Why didn’t he have any contingencies for this? It’s not clear why he approved Zawu as ambassador in the first place, and even the game handwaves her appointment as pure chance. Using a havali for the role would have been a lot less risky – just have them wear one of those mysterious hooded cloaks to cover the ears and you’re set. But then Zawu can’t be involved with Ethan and Castor, which is basically her entire character and her reason for defecting in the first place, so that would require retooling like half the plot. The best explanation I can think of is that this wasn’t actually important and Ortas was just trying to keep Zawu busy. Since it prevented her from learning the truth of the Demon War (why did Barasur trust a general and not the ambassador to not sell them out, by the way), I guess it worked.

It’s a shame that such a critical reveal got fumbled after such excellent buildup. It fits thematically, but the details don’t match up.

(And he doesn’t even bother to chuck some enemies at them as he’s conveniently called away by deus ex machina! Even Zawu was good enough to do that! That would have been a much more dramatically significant placement for the boss battle, too. Why must you be such a disappointing villain, Ortas.)


	4. Criticism of the Handling of Ethan's Amnesia, and Alternate Proposals

 

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This reveal is kiiinda cringe-worthy. It really feels to me like the game got tired of fulfilling its promise of subverting all the cliches after the Entalar arc and just started playing tons of stuff painfully straight so it could get to the end without burning out. I like the Castor arc in the abstract but man does the plotting suffer. (See also Raka Mural being a complete waste of time. You used to be so good at keeping filler dungeons plot-relevant, game! Why you do this.)

The central conceit of the party members is supposed to be that everyone’s a subversion of a standard jRPG character archetype, right? The Chosen One isn’t, Angsty Brooder is actually over the worst of it, the Staff Chick is frickin’ awesome, the plot-dispensing prophet is conning you, and the mysterious amnesiac didn’t actually forget anything important.

…Except he did, right here: He forgot his connection to the main villain, as well as his entire motivation for pretty much everything he does.

 

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I love this scene on the boat. It’s such a brilliant subversion of audience expectations: we  _don’t_  get a dramatic trigger reveal about the amnesiac’s secret knowledge and important past, he tells us himself. Nothing that’s actually plot-relevant was ever arbitrarily withheld due to contrivance: he knew the whole time, but held back for pragmatic reasons. This scene is a major turning point in terms of the tone of the story, the plot itself, Hilbert’s character arc, and Ethan’s assimilation into the group.

So when the game tries to go j/k we totally are doing the dramatic reveal thing, it feels like a betrayal. And considering that it’s a long lost sibling reveal, pretty much the poster child of the most hackneyed jRPG cliche imaginable, it’s doubly painful. When doing a super subversive work, it is important not to mindlessly throw out all the cliches, since conventional stuff is probably conventional for a reason – but this is too much. Dramatic amnesiac reveals are cool, yeah, but the game tried to have its cake and eat it too.

I actually think it’s a plot hole, too. Ethan says he remembered the things he most wanted to remember, and forgot the things he most wanted to forget. Why on Earth would he want to forget he’s Castor’s brother? It’s especially confusing when he lists the events leading up to his imprisonment as one of the things he remembered, because we later learn the reason he was imprisoned was that he tried to pull an Overprotective Big Brother on Castor. So… how did he remember why he was imprisoned but not his reasons for doing it?

There’s a really easy solution to this: have him remember his relation to Castor, but not the Cromwell attack.  _That_  is something he’d definitely want to forget, and it would still let us have the dramatic angst coma thing. It’s even reasonable that he’d drag his feet on telling the others that btw I’m related to the guy you hate, so that could be revealed picemeal instead of all at once. This would also make a clearer divide between the stuff he already knows and the stuff he has to remember: this way, the only stuff locked off by amnesia is firmly in the domain of events important to him personally but irrelevant to the larger plot. That would be another subversion, as the amnesiac’s secret past is usually directly plot-relevant. If nothing critical is locked off, I think playing the amnesiac reveal straight is a lot easier to swallow. I think that’s actually what the game  _tried_  to do, and it basically plays out that way, but I consider Ethan’s motivation and the leverage he has over the antagonist to be too important.


	5. Interesting Note on Ethan and Lorenza

Thinking about Ethan just made me realize something about his relationship with Lorenza. I’ve heard at least some people ship them romantically, but that age chart SCF drew in the LP thread that I can no longer find makes it look like they’re at least a decade apart in age, which implies we’re meant to view it as platonic. Father/daughter was my first conclusion, but they’re not quite far enough apart in age for that, and it’s not like Lorenza is a fragile girl who needs a parental figure holding her hand all the time anyway. But then it hit me:

They have a  _big brother/little sister_  relationship.

And isn’t that just amazing foreshadowing?


	6. Castor's Redemption Arc as Case Study

Sympathetic villains and redemption arcs have become something of a hot-button issue in fandom in recent years. In light of this, I think it's useful to examine the way Last Scenario handles Castor, and how, in my opinion, it does this well.

I think there are three major components that make Castor's redemption work:

 **1\. There is a clear path to redemption.** All of Castor's evil can be traced back to a single chain of reasoning: he wants personal security, he believes the only way to obtain this is through power, and in turn believes that the only way for him to gain the power he desires is by sowing war and death. That is the _only reason_ he does evil. He is not simply sadistic; he does not hurt people for no reason. Nor is his evil tied to multiple murky, interconnected motivations that are difficult to disentangle. It's very clear-cut: if you can convince him his (fundamentally irrational) plan is unnecessary, he will stop hurting people. He has no other reason to do evil.

This setup makes it very easy to imagine what a redemption can look like for him. It allows the heroes to have realistic expectations about saving him and a clear plan of action through which they can do so, making it reasonable for them to attempt it when just shooting him would solve the problem more expediently.

Without this component, a redemption arc is hard to pull off logistically. Even if you can picture a concrete and easy way to redeem the villain, if you can't convey that to the audience, they stand a good chance of weighing the options and deciding the villain isn't worth the effort. Saving the villain necessarily means placing their needs over their victims', even if only temporarily. The easier and clearer that option is, the more justifiable it becomes.

 **2\. There is something worth saving.** We see repeatedly that Castor is a genuinely good person. The very first time he meets Hilbert face-to-face is when he is personally protecting civilians from the fallout of the war, cleaning up after his own mess to minimize the harm to innocent bystanders. He is overwhelmed with guilt at the knowledge Helio died because of him, and his soldiers repeatedly demonstrate outstanding loyalty to him. By the end, he claims his motivation is to make a world where no one will ever have to suffer like he did again, and I think he genuinely believes it. He genuinely believes he is doing the right thing and that the ends justify the means.

This makes Castor's story a _tragedy_. He is a good person who was made to do evil by the cruelties of the world. We are shown evidence that good person is still in there, and that makes us believe he is worth saving.

Without this component, a redemption arc is hard to pull of emotionally. As mentioned in the first point, redemption takes a lot of work, and the heroes' resources are not infinite. If the heroes are taking this path, there is an implicit question of _why_. That question must be adequately answered not just by the characters, but by the narrative. If the audience isn't emotionally on the same page as your heroes, their attempt to save the villain is going to fall flat. "Why don't ya just shoot him?" is a question to ask the heroes, not just the villains.

(I think it's worth noting here, because this is a pitfall I've seen a lot of authors fall into, that just making a villain sympathetic isn't enough. Suffering doesn't automatically make you a good person. You can be as sad as you want, if you're hurting people without remorse you're still a bad person and have to be stopped for your victims' safety. Remember that "I suffered; why shouldn't they?" is a response to suffering as well, but it's not a good one. Castor, despite getting it twisted, still responded to his trauma with "No one should suffer like I suffered," and this is clear in his actions.)

Which leads us nicely into…

 **3\. We can see ourselves in the villain.** Castor is, to one degree or another, relatable. Even if you have not suffered comparable trauma, his motivation is understandable. We want to feel safe, we want to feel important, we want to be self-sufficient, we want to be independent. And there's one part of him that will _definitely_ resonate with gamers in particular: we want power. Castor takes these normal urges and takes them to a horrifying extreme, holding up a dark mirror to our own desires. Through Castor, we see how easy it is to slip. _We could be him._

This makes his redemption _personal_ for the audience. He is an id demon; we see our darkest flaws in him. By redeeming him, we therefore redeem ourselves. That, more than anything, is going to make the audience root for the heroes to save him.

I'd say this element is the most optional, but also the most significant. This is what will make your narrative stick with people, and what will make them empathize with the villain even if you can't pull off a logical or emotional component.

 

And a related but orthogonal topic, I think, is how privilege and power dynamics factor into your villain. If the villain is just evil because they don't see lower classes/other races as people, that's… going to put up some pretty big barriers to all three components. Unlearning prejudice is extremely difficult and takes a lifetime of work; doing it with a single dramatic speech is going to feel tacky and unrealistic. The place they're coming from isn't going to be universally relatable, and is almost certainly going to beg the question of what about them is even worth saving. Notice how Augustus is much more sympathetic and liked than Helga, despite both of them causing pretty much equal amounts of harm and having similarly selfish motivations. Us peasants can see ourselves in Augustus and the way he had to work for every bit of power he had, even if he ultimately abused it for his own ends; not so much with Helga. It's not impossible to redeem a villain of this type, but it will be an uphill battle.

Altogether, the most important takeaway is that you should make the _audience_ want to save the villain. That's what all these components do. There is nothing more hated than artificially imposing a moral stance on a narrative where it doesn't fit. If you think a villain is worth saving, show us _why_. When the villain says, "Help me," the audience should want to say  _Yes._

Feel free to mention additional case studies in the comments.


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